It’s a bit challenging separating Ralph Macchio from his most famous role, Daniel LaRusso.
Even now, 40 years after The Karate Kid first introduced the world to the scrappy New Jersey kid who learned karate from an Okinawan handyman, Macchio still moves through the world with the ghost of Daniel trailing behind him.
He knows it, too. “We’re different, but same,” he says, over Zoom, about his alter ego. He adds that he oftentimes use that phrase from the late Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi.
“If I got my butt kicked on the beach by five guys driving motorcycles, I probably wouldn’t go back for more. Daniel LaRusso would not leave well enough alone,” he says, smiling as he references Daniel’s youthful bravado.
It’s a self-aware statement, and a telling one.
Because Macchio is, in some ways, still fighting that beach fight. His career, his very presence in Hollywood, has been one long battle against expectations and the passage of time.
In Cobra Kai, the Netflix series that reignited The Karate Kid saga for a new generation, Daniel is technically no longer the underdog. He’s successful, established, the owner of a car dealership, but he’s still haunted by old rivalries, still reacting with the same hot-headed impulsiveness that made him so compelling in the first place.
Macchio, now 63, has learned a few things that Daniel hasn’t.
“Some of the life lessons, the Miyagi lessons, are things I use in my own life,” he says. “You know, I always talk about, ‘Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, get squished like grape.’ That’s, you know, the only bad choice is no choice. Commit to something, and even if it’s wrong, recalibrate.” He pauses. “I’d like Daniel to learn that from me, too. To not be so knee-jerk. To take a beat before reacting. That’s more Ralph.”
For decades, Macchio’s career seemed frozen in time. He wasn’t struggling, exactly — he had steady work in television and film, occasional stints on Broadway — but he was also inextricably tied to the past. He was Johnny Cade from The Outsiders, the soft-spoken kid with the haunted eyes who told Ponyboy to “stay gold” before dying in a hospital bed. He was Daniel LaRusso, forever crane-kicking his way into pop culture history. He was a touchstone for Gen X and elder millennials, an enduring face of ’80s cinema who, for a long time, Hollywood didn’t seem to know what to do with.
And then came Cobra Kai. Originally a sleeper hit on YouTube before becoming a Netflix hit, the series did something remarkable — it brought Daniel back without trapping him in amber. It gave him flaws, complexities, and, most importantly, a future. “We got to do that in the finale,” Macchio teases. “We got to bring Daniel full circle in a way that’s really nice.”
But Cobra Kai is also about something more than nostalgia. It’s about passing things forward, something Macchio has thought about a lot lately.
During our conversation, I spontaneously shared a personal story with him — how, as a fan of The Karate Kid, I named my first-born after him. Years later, after my son passed away, my daughter found herself studying The Outsiders in school. She came home talking about Johnny Cade and how she liked the actor who played him. I told her that Macchio, in a way, was a part of our family history because of his brother’s name. It was a moment of connection, a realization of how stories, characters, and performances can weave into the fabric of people’s lives.
Macchio listens, his expression shifting from surprise to something deeper — gratitude, maybe, or the quiet weight of knowing that what he does, these roles he’s played, have truly mattered to people.
“That’s what we get to do as actors,” he says after a pause. “You’re touching on emotions. You’re connecting on a human level. The Outsiders, The Karate Kid — those stories connected to audiences in a way that feels real. And that’s missing a bit in the world with technology today.” His voice was steady and comforting, eyes bright. “But hearing something as pure as that — it’s awesome. It’s great. It reminds you why you do this. Thanks for sharing that.”
And maybe that’s the real trick to staying gold. Not clinging to the past, not trying to hold on to something that inevitably changes, but recognizing the golden moments as they happen and carrying them forward.
“It’s so hard to stay gold, because — nothing gold can stay, right?” Macchio says, echoing Johnny Cade’s famous line based on Robert Frost’s poem. “But it’s about living in the moment. Like right now. This interview, looking at Cobra Kai, at what we’ve been able to do. That’s a golden moment. It won’t stay. It never does. But you embrace it while you have it.”
He smiles, and for a moment, he’s all of them at once: the heroic underdog in The Karate Kid, the tragic teen in The Outsiders, and the actor who outlasted Hollywood’s short attention span. Daniel LaRusso may be near the end of his story, but Ralph Macchio? He’s still fighting.
